


Sleeping Arrangements

by dancingbeetle



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, cosleeping, pretty fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingbeetle/pseuds/dancingbeetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma and Killian have some unconscious sleeping habits. Ficlets from my Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. back to back

**Author's Note:**

> When this ended up becoming two tiny ficlets rather than one, I figured I might as well post it here too. I think there might be one more? We'll see what I dream up. Rated T because it mentions them Doing It.

Emma and Killian sleep back to back.

It isn’t that they don’t want to be close. It started in Neverland; the dark held many dangers, and savior and pirate would often end up on the same side of the fire, backs toward each other in order to keep watch over a more effective area.

Emma would pretend to sleep.

Hook would pretend he wasn’t acutely aware of the woman behind him, pretend he couldn’t feel the light and heat of her even from several feet away.

They both pretended they didn’t end up a few inches closer to each other every night.

And somehow, what started as a means of defense became a habit. The first time Killian slept in Emma’s bed (fully clothed, tearstained, agape at his good fortune), they fell asleep nestled in each other’s arms and awoke with their backs turned. The first time they made love (tender, breathless, eyes wide in the half-light of dusk) it was in Killian’s narrow berth on the Jolly Roger, and they slept pressed together, sweaty back to sweaty back, ankles intertwined.

It might be a while until they sleep any other way. The dark holds many dangers.


	2. between her and the door

Killian likes to sleep between Emma and the door. It’s silly, a subconscious attempt to protect her, as if harm might enter the room and simply stop, checked by his slumbering body before the threat could reach her. He is, after all, still a captain — still used to being the first and last lines of defense against any foe that menaces his crew, his ship, his heart.

He would be hard-pressed to say precisely what foes he must defend Emma against. Life has calmed like the sea after a storm, and the few perils that do remain are of a sort unlikely to come in through the door. And yet — just as Emma, the Savior (his savior), believes she’ll always be the one to rescue them all, he is just as firm in his belief that he’ll always be the one standing between her and danger.

Emma is pretty sure Killian has no idea about this little habit of his. In bed, neither of them has a ‘side,’ so it’s subtle: the little ways he maneuvers their bodies when necessary, rolling them over with a kiss and a laugh or making sure he can hold her with his good arm. And always ending up lying closer to the door.

Normally, out in the real world, something like this would bother her. She’s a grown woman, and she’s never liked the sensation of being needlessly protected. It feels like being coddled, like the way dates in Boston would glance at her high heels, open the door for her, and expect _something_ in return. But with Killian, in the quiet and privacy of the night, she doesn’t mind so much. Maybe because she already knows exactly what his expectations are; maybe because his desire to protect her has never cost her her strength or his admiration.

Maybe because, for the first time, she doesn’t mind a man who’s willing to stay, willing to stand (or lie) between her and the unknown beyond their bedroom door.


End file.
